Monday, October 08, 2007

"This is Radio Nowhere, is There Anybody Alive Out There?"

It's been one heck of a month and a bit. On the work side of things, we packed all our shit and moved down the road to our new digs. It was nowhere near as painful as our last move a year or so ago. One 14 hour day (capped off with the midnight launch of Halo 3) and we were pretty much back to normal. The new place looks incredible compared to the old, i'm biased and all, but i think it's probably the most presentable looking place in the area. We're right accross the street from a Blockbuster Video, and things have picked up a tad. I'll try and snap a few shots to give you fine folks who don't live 'round here some idea of where I spend the lion's share of my time.

In Game news, I've finally laid mitts on a Playstation 3, and i have to give it to Sony, in spite of all the shit that's been circulating about them, and the PS3 in particular, they've put together one hell of a beautiful machine. Next to the PS3, the 360 feels cheap, and hapahazardly slapped together. Game wise, the 360 still owns the competition, but Sony's machine itself is a beauty. It only cost me a little over 100 games from "the collection", and 1.45, but thus far, it was worth it.

The first playthrough on the new hardware was Heavenly Sword, which had been ranking up scores that land in the higher part of average. I just don't understand it. The game is a phenomenal piece of work. The execution is flawless - from start to finish the game is what i could only call a tour de force! The ending was also a thing of beauty, and while some might call 7-8 hours of game time short, there wasn't a single moment where i grew frustrated, bored, or felt was less than flawlessly presented. How many much longer games can you think of where you have maybe 7-10 hours of sheer bliss alongside a few hours of slogging and grinding (if i ever meet David Jaffe i'm going to kick him in the nuts for the Hades level in God of War). Heavenly Sword remains riveting and rewarding throughout, and that is to be commended. The nature of the game would have made a 15-20 hour game seem drawn out and dull. Worth noting as well that the graphics and sound were phenomenal, some of the best i've seen.

Lair was also a hell of a lot of fun, and while it wasn't the solid 9 game that Heavenly Sword was, it's still a good deal better than the reviews have been painting it out to be. I'd give it a 7 in my book.

Conan and Assassin's Creed have also been pre-ordered, and i anxiously await them.

Also got my copy of Two Worlds for the xbox360, and promptly lost over 10 hours to it.

With the purchase of the PS3 also comes Steve's decent into High Definition DVD madness. After experiencing the joy of Blu-Ray , ipromptly grabbed a HD-DVD drive for the 360, and have begun in earnest to sell off select DVD's from the collection in order to facilitate the purcase of same movies in some shiny new HD format. I'm up to 10 titles as of now, split 50/50 between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, and while some of them blew my mind (Blood Diamond), others were signifigantly less impressive (Sleepy hollow). Can't wait for next week (Transformers in HD!!) and December can't come soon enough (BLADE RUNNER). The toughest decision now is which formats to buy on. I tend to enjoy the look of Blu-Ray's packaging a little more (the shiny blue plastic looks less "bargain bin" than HD-DVD's Maroon). I'd also much rather play the stuff on the PS3 with my shiny Blu-Ray remote and whisper quiet operation, even using the HD-DVD add-on, the 360 still sounds like a washing machine.

Music wise, the new Bruce Springsteen is pretty kick ass, and the new Cult CD did not dissapoint. Neither really struck me like a bolt from the blue or anything, but they're both damn tight releases from their respective artists. If Bruce had maintained the awesomeness of "Radio Nowhere" throughout the runtime of "Magic", we'd be looking at definite contender for album of the year. it really is an amazing tune, but the rest of the album falls back into traditional "E-Street Band" territory with lots of wailing saxaphone and loose grooves. I was a little let down to be honest after the awesome rock vibe of Radio Nowhere. It's all solid material though. The Cult meanwhile, hearken back to their Electric/Sonic Temple/Ceremony years on their latest, which is to say, they've dumped the heavy metal vibe of "Beyond Good and Evil". It's not an exceptional piece of work or anything, i doubt it's going to bring about any rise in Cult Awareness or any kind of "She Sells/Firewoman" level of popularity, but it should please fans, and God knows i had my doubts we'd ever see another cult album after BG&E. It's just great to see Astbury and Duffy together again.

Not too much else to report, on the family front, both gals are doing excellent, Samantha loves her Daddy, which is great, and Abby has started on some kind of pre-Kindergarden thing, so we send our kids to school before we send em to school now? Man they do grow up fast.

Congratulations are also in order for some of the guys, Congrats to Jon and Kate, and congrats to Andy and Tracy, all of whom have done the insane and gotten engaged. Why should you guys be happy all your life? And mucho congrats to Russ and Lisa for buying their first home, which is a beaultiful place. If you could combine my home theatre room with the rest of their place, man you would have the ultimate diggs!

The rundown:

Watching: Shooter/Blood Diamond/Heroes: season 1/Deadwood: Season 3/Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon